Microsoft: Google Chrome doesn’t respect your privacy

Microsoft claims IE8 is better at safeguarding a user's privacy than Google …

Microsoft is going on the offensive against Google, accusing the search giant of creating a browser that does not respect user privacy. The company posted a video, embedded below, on TechNet Edge with the following description: "Watch a demo on how Google Chrome collects every keystroke you make and how Internet Explorer 8 keeps your information private through two address bars and In Private browsing."

Microsoft's first criticism is Chrome's combining the address bar and the search box into a single entry box; IE8 keeps those fields separate. "By keeping these boxes separate, your privacy is better protected and the addresses of the sites you're visiting aren't automatically shared with Microsoft, or anyone else," says IE product manager Pete LePage.

"As I start to type an address into the address bar, Fiddler [a Web debugging proxy] shows that for nearly every character I type, Chrome sends a request back to Google," LePage says. "I haven't even hit enter yet to load the website and Google is already getting information about the domain and sites I'm visiting." Right after that, he shows how typing something in the address bar in IE8 is very different—nothing is shared with the search provider, according to LePage.

In the second part of the video, LePage demonstrates how Internet Explorer 8 has a privacy feature called InPrivate, a privacy mode to allow browsing without leaving a trace. Unfortunately, he fails to acknowledge the existence of Google Chrome's Incognito, which disables history tracking, which undercuts his argument.

It's worth taking a closer look at LePage's first accusation. Even though he didn't really elaborate, the reason for the striking difference for IE8's and Chrome's behaviors is really that simple: IE8 has two boxes and Chrome has one. LePage makes an important mistake in his accusation against Google: his statement should not be "Chrome sends a request back to Google" but it should be "Chrome sends a request back to the search provider." He makes this distinction with IE8 but does not with Chrome. The information is being sent so that the search provider can help the user choose a query right in their browser.

We downloaded Fiddler to make some comparisons of our own. As we suspected, Chrome can be set to send information on every keystroke to Bing (or any other search engine that supports Search Suggestions) instead of Google. The same behavior occurs in IE8, but only in the search bar. LePage is only correct in his assertion that IE8 does not send information to anyone when the user types into the address bar.

See for yourself: download Fiddler and type something into the address bar on Chrome and watch how Fiddler reacts when you have Search Suggestions on and off. Then do the same in both IE8 fields.

Why is there an install silverlight button in the middle of this article?

I like the combined box better from a usability perspective. I do not have to make a decision about what I am doing before I type. This is a situation where I am more than willing to let a search provider know where I am going in return for the convenience of combined results.

The only thing I wish chrome did differently is how it searches history. At work all of our intranet urls start with the same characters so the url is not the best way to find where I am going. Firefox works great for this, searching the page titles and getting me what I am looking for. Chrome constantly matches urls that I do not care about.

Why is there an install silverlight button in the middle of this article?

I like the combined box better from a usability perspective. I do not have to make a decision about what I am doing before I type. This is a situation where I am more than willing to let a search provider know where I am going in return for the convenience of combined results.

The only thing I wish chrome did differently is how it searches history. At work all of our intranet urls start with the same characters so the url is not the best way to find where I am going. Firefox works great for this, searching the page titles and getting me what I am looking for. Chrome constantly matches urls that I do not care about.

The combined searchbar (or searchbox) and locationbar (or addressbar), combined the superbar, is a pro. It gives people with a small screen more space and there's no need to use two different bars from where you have to switch.

Second every keystroke is sent to Google, yes, this again is a FEATURE. There's even an option to disable it (you could learn from this M$). Wrench > "Options" > "Under the Hood" > "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar".

How funny that at loading this page Firefox (on OS X Leopard) crashed, which does not happen often. Restarted it, reloaded the page and got a dialog asking if I want to update the Silverlight plugin. Checked with Firefox: "Up to date". At this point I deactivated the thing.

Heh, Microsoft uses this story as a targeted trojan horse to try to get Firefox users to install silverlight? No thanks

Or you could be glad that Adobe has competition and DL silverlight. We need more options for interactive media on the web because flash today is to interactive media as IE6 in 2006 is to HTML. Competition will only keep adobe honest. Bring on silverlight and HTML5.

This video is so wrong. The combined searchbar and locationbar (combined the superbar) is a pro. Second every keystroke is sent to Google, yes, this again is a FEATURE. There's even an option to disable it (you could learn from this M$).

Part of me says not to reply to this troll. But...

The average person doesn't know jack squat about how the internet or web browsers work, and they'll leave everything at default settings. They don't know that for each keystroke, you're sending your half-completed URL to google for it to guess what website you might want to visit. Whether it can be turned on or off is irrelivant from their perspective. You're givng up to Google any URL you type in manually.

But I don't think its that big of a privacy violation either - Google already knows my search history anyways, so whats the occasional typed-in URL. So I leave it on.

Why is there an install silverlight button in the middle of this article?

because there is a silverlight powered video that goes there, if you have it installed. i do not, because i don't have admin rights on my work box, so i can't install SL. or update flash...or java...or damn near anything else, but still nags me on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day.

Google's entire business model is to leverage your private information to maximize their ad revenue. They are not really stealing because they offer you something in return: great software. But they don't like to talk about it because this implicit trade-off makes many of their customers uncomfortable.

As structured, Microsoft and Mozilla are better positioned to give you more "honest" software. They have little incentive to use your private information and have started to recognize that there is a business advantage to protecting you.

In this age of free free free it is refreshing to simply get what you pay for, not more than you bargained for.

Tbh you shouldn't have to use incognito to stop Google from data mining you.

What if you want your history?

Microsoft Data mines the stuff sent to Bing through the IE8 search box. Who really types addresses directly anymore? I don't do it very often at all. Also if you are doing anything you don't want other to know about, Incognito/InPrivate is the way to go in all cases anyway.

Second every keystroke is sent to Google, yes, this again is a FEATURE. There's even an option to disable it (you could learn from this M$). Wrench > "Options" > "Under the Hood" > "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar". ...

Bollocks. Any (data-mining-) 'feature' that forces users to opt-out is sleazy at best and malicious at worst. Doesn't matter who does it or what kind of slogan they got hangin' in their lobby.

Edit: And yes, that 'Install Silverlight' button/graphic/thingamabob ... you Ars guys are having a laugh, right? Right?

Or you could be glad that Adobe has competition and DL silverlight. We need more options for interactive media on the web because flash today is to interactive media as IE6 in 2006 is to HTML. Competition will only keep adobe honest. Bring on silverlight and HTML5.

Microsoft: Providing competition and keeping the industry honest for over 30yrs./sarcasm

Competition is good, but that doesn't necessarily mean Flash OR Silverlight are "A Good Thing" simply because they compete. Personally, I'm hoping widespread support for HTML5 will mean Flash and Silverlight get relegated to niche markets... or at least, much less commonly used.

Tbh you shouldn't have to use incognito to stop Google from data mining you.

What if you want your history?

Microsoft Data mines the stuff sent to Bing through the IE8 search box. Who really types addresses directly anymore? I don't do it very often at all. Also if you are doing anything you don't want other to know about, Incognito/InPrivate is the way to go in all cases anyway.

> As structured, Microsoft and Mozilla are better positioned to give you more "honest" software. They have little incentive to use your private information and have started to recognize that there is a business advantage to protecting you.

Except Microsoft does exactly the same "invasion of privacy" in their own search bar, just not in the address bar. And Bing mines user data just as heavily as Google's search.

Nope, no real difference between MS and Google here, just shameless propaganda from MS.

...Second every keystroke is sent to Google, yes, this again is a FEATURE. There's even an option to disable it (you could learn from this M$). Wrench > "Options" > "Under the Hood" > "Use a suggestion service to help complete searches and URLs typed in the address bar".

I think 'doormat's reply is spot-on. People generally use their browser with default settings. Most Ars readers don't. But the people that use defaults aren't idiots. They're just more interested in the task, not the tool.

But I'd also suggest that any "feature" (even one proclaimed in caps) that's described as W>X>Y>Z pretty much counts as "buried".

And on the topic of defaults, just because you can set Bing to be the search provider doesn't undermine the original argument too much, it seems to me. I got a chuckle out of the pretty unlikely picture of someone downloading Google's browser then switching the searching engine to Bing (I dunno for sure, but that's gotta be pretty unlikely). But seriously, if someone sets Bing up in their Chrome browser, and Microsoft ends up inadvertently data-mining that user because of the way Google designed its behavior, that's not as a result of anything Microsoft did. I don't like Microsoft, but for once, they don't deserve that blame.

Is there convenience to the unified address bar in Chrome? Sure. But I still think there's weight to the criticism offered by LePage. It's not crushing, but it's not trivial, either.

Heh, Microsoft uses this story as a targeted trojan horse to try to get Firefox users to install silverlight? No thanks

Or you could be glad that Adobe has competition and DL silverlight. We need more options for interactive media on the web because flash today is to interactive media as IE6 in 2006 is to HTML. Competition will only keep adobe honest. Bring on silverlight and HTML5.

Off topic: This forced me to install Moonlight on Linux and on my Atom 330 system. Silverlight runs smoother that Flash. Maybe Flash really does suck if Adobe who makes Flash can't get it to work on well on Linux, while Novel who doesn't make Silverlight can get it to work well (neither works well fullscreen though on this crappy processor with these crappy Intel graphics.)

Heh, Microsoft uses this story as a targeted trojan horse to try to get Firefox users to install silverlight? No thanks

Or you could be glad that Adobe has competition and DL silverlight. We need more options for interactive media on the web because flash today is to interactive media as IE6 in 2006 is to HTML. Competition will only keep adobe honest. Bring on silverlight and HTML5.

This is just BS to hide the fact that MS does not dynamically search for prospective sites while you are typing in which it is NOT based on browsing history alone.

Try it for yourself, Chrome searches the web and tries to autocomplete the address, whether you've ever been to the site or not. IE on the otherhand only searches you personal history for the autocomplete feature. I'm pretty sure it is even location based (ex. I'm Canadian, so if I type in the word 'air', aircanada.com is the first site listed), i.e this is a major feature of chrome, and one that MS is unable to compete with unless they also monitor each keystroke.(which may not be possible for them because of their corporate nature)

For MS to make it out to be a bad thing baffles me, its not like Google (or Bing for that matter) does not know what my search habbits are in the first place. Nor does this prove that Google is actually using this data, I really doubt site history is as valuable to Google as search history.(which is usually far more specific)

I have many privacy concerns with Google, but this is not one of them.

Your personal information & usage patterns are valuable.Google monetizes this information - otherwise there's no point in gathering it.Google's defaults are always against protecting information they want to collect.They rely on your ambivalence/ignorance to protect this information.

Heh, Microsoft uses this story as a targeted trojan horse to try to get Firefox users to install silverlight? No thanks

Or you could be glad that Adobe has competition and DL silverlight. We need more options for interactive media on the web because flash today is to interactive media as IE6 in 2006 is to HTML. Competition will only keep adobe honest. Bring on silverlight and HTML5.

Bring on HTML5, absolutely! Never Silverlight. A choice between two proprietary plug-ins is a cure worse than the disease, for me; I would frankly rather leave Adobe with Flash, while working to eliminate or at least minimize its usage, than to promote the success and adoption of a *second* interactive media format. If Silverlight succeeds, that's two plug-ins everyone has to install, instead of one; 2 x proprietary is not a victory in my eyes.

Try it for yourself, Chrome searches the web and tries to autocomplete the address, whether you've ever been to the site or not. IE on the otherhand only searches you personal history for the autocomplete feature. I'm pretty sure it is even location based (ex. I'm Canadian, so if I type in the word 'air', aircanada.com is the first site listed), i.e this is a major feature of chrome, and one that MS is unable to compete with unless they also monitor each keystroke.(which may not be possible for them because of their corporate nature).

As others have pointed out, IE8 (and Safari and Firefox) do the same web-search-suggestion when you type in the search field. What bothers me is that in the other browsers, using the search field is optional; you can autocomplete in the address field without using the search field. In Chrome, you aren't given a choice; you are *forced* to use the search field, because that's all there is. I agree it's not much of a privacy issue, but I hate having that rammed down my throat, and it sometimes does feel a little creepy to have suggestions pop up that way - especially when your words are mistaken for a NWS topic and 'disturbing' suggestions are listed.

So I messed with fiddler myself to make sure, but Chrome in Incognito does not monitor suggestions into the superbar. This implies that google is respecting privacy where it guarantees privacy, so good.

Also, I find it really lulsy that you guys are whining that Microsoft is using Silverlight for their own videos, because it's obviously what they'd do, even if they weren't trying to push adoption. Obviously you use your own standards for your own media. And it's not like they just did it for this one video, most microsoft content uses silverlight, if you haven't noticed.